Australian Startup Nitro has secured US$15 million in funding from venture capitalist firm Battery Ventures in a bid to challenge Adobe for a larger chunk of the digital document market.
The company which, was founded in Melbourne, will use the majority of the US$15m to accelerate international growth including hiring (with a focus on Europe), platform and infrastructure build-out and driving innovation, plus adoption of Nitro’s digital document products, including Nitro Pro and Nitro Cloud.
Prior funding comprised a Series A round of US$6.6 million from Australian firm, Starfish Ventures in 2012. Total funding to date is US$21.6 million.
It has more than 490,000 customers in almost 200 countries, 150 employees in five locations, including its San Francisco headquarters.
Its products, including Nitro Pro and Nitro Cloud, make it easy for businesses to share documents, and work with shared documents.
Nitro Pro is an alternative to Adobe Acrobat and Nitro Cloud enables document sharing, signing, and collaboration on any device.
Nitro Founder and chief executive, Sam chandler, said the investment allowed the company to visit its ‘Smart Documents’ vision to life for organisations of all sizes.
“We want to help our customers close contracts faster, save money, collaborate more efficiently, modernise their document processes, and do it all more elegantly and securely than the old ways of paper and email," he said.
"We’re delighted to have a partner of Battery’s calibre coming aboard.”
Battery general partner, Michael Brown, who will join Nitro's board of directors, said: “Every business deals with documents and knows the pain points in effectively sharing them and using them to collaborate with others.
"Both offline and online, Nitro is helping to solve these universal problems.
“It’s exciting to think that we’ve only just scratched the surface of this significant market opportunity and Battery is delighted to partner with the Nitro team to deliver on the company’s vision of bringing smarter documents to everyone.”
